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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7732295" data-attributes="member: 42582"><a href="https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?736425-Burning-Wheel-First-Burning-Wheel-session" target="_blank">Here's an example that illustrates</a> the difference:I GMed my first Burning Wheel session earlier today. <snip> One of the players had bought rulebooks and built a BW PC (a noble-born Rogue Wizard inspired by Alatar, one of Tolkien's blue wizards of the East). <snip> Writing up beliefs took a little while. The rogue wizard, Jobe, had a relationship with his brother and rival. The ranger-assassin, Halika, had a relationship, also hostile with her mentor, and the player decided that was because it turned out she was being prepared by him to be sacrificed to a demon. It seemed to make sense that the two rival, evil mages should be one and the same, and each player wrote a belief around defeating him: in Jobe's case, preventing his transformation into a Balrog; in Halika's case, to gain revenge. <snip> each also wrote up a immediate goal-oriented belief: I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, I'm not leaving Hardby penniless. <snip> I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)That's a starting session. But the build of the PCs allows the GM (me) to frame an opening situation in response to those builds (in the circumstances, a peddler of trinkets rather than an old man in a tavern), where "the adventure" is not something I, the GM, have settled on and want to "hook" the players into - but, rather, is something that unfolds out of their responses to my take up of their "hooks" (eg the belief about finding magic items to help confront the demon-possessed brother).To connect that to the overall discussion with  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - in Saelorns' game, the player is expected to have a PC who is interested in whatever it is that the GM throws up (so if it's kidnapped elves, the player has to get on board with that), and the fact that the player writes a PC whose main concern is freeing his brother from balrog possession doesn't generate any guaranteee that that will actually come up in play; in Lanefan's game there might be six plotlines to choose from, but in respect of each of them the situation is the same as for Saelorn - there is no guarantee that what the player cares about will matter in the game.</blockquote>

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